Seeking to answer the question “why college education is important to me”, I was pretty confused with the need to display my entire thoughts on appropriate issue. To be as close as it possible to all stand points of my view about the importance of college education, I decided to divide my answer into two parts, that address philosophic and rational ideas respectively.
As for the first one, it is closely related to my own aspirations, dreams, goals and life priorities in general. Educational philosopher Robert M. Hutchins once said: “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives” (“Quotations on knowledge”,1). Pretty similar idea could be found in the words of Carl Rogers: “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn – and change” (“Quotations on knowledge”,1). In this paper, the validity of mentioned quotes is determined with their ability to show out the roots of my opinion about the importance of college education. Being purposeful and ambitious personality, it looks pretty clear to me that a human’s life is like a set of challenges we face every day, and the quantity of these challenges proportionally increases with the growth of goals a person sets to achieve. In other words, I perceive college education as the tool to response adequately life tasks and problems in future. This statement does not refers career only. There is a talk about entire life. I’m deeply convinced that college education takes incredibly valuable part in human’s consciousness forming. It shouldn’t be treated just like some source of specific knowledge obtaining, according to chosen specialty. It is the way to expand horizons, options and opportunities. I often imagine person without college education, as one who stands in absolutely dark room, with only one seen door to get out, while there are at least ten of them there. On the other hand, those who was lucky to study in college appears in the same dark room, with one seen door still, but with a flashlight in hand. By exerting enough efforts, it will be much easier to find the right door with the help of light then with blind search in a dark room.That is my understanding about the role and mission of college experience.
Thinking about the philosophical background of my views about the importance of education, I still have no right to remain rational side of the same coin unnoticed. Mostly, it is connected to the realities of contemporary labor markets. At all the times, capitalism required tough competition, which allowed to weed out the strongest participants. Thereby, everyone ought to seek for all possible chances to make him/herself maximally competitive, especially, considering the outcomes of world financial crisis and economic recession. The college education is mandatory from this point of view. The economic direction of most countries all around the globe has already changed its vector from manufactures to services. Thus, we witness increased demand on qualified professionals and specialists. Current humans’ experience doesn’t know any alternative to college education, on the way of highly skilled profession obtaining. In this way, the importance of college is grounded from rational point of view. In addition, I would like to mention facts provided by Census Bureau. On average, the statistics for college graduates compared with other education levels are next during an adults working lifetime:
- High school graduates – $1.2 million;
- Bachelors degree holders – $2.1 million (“Statistics On College Graduates”,1).
Seemingly, this data is persuasive and enough to believe in importance of college education.
To sum up, I’ve never was enough respective to people, who treat their college experience as some kind of page from a life story. As for me, it is a key that I dreamed to get during last few years, and now I hope it will help me to open the door to highly consciousness and successful life.
References
U.a. (2008). “Statistics On College Graduates”, 1p. Importance of college. Retrieved from http://www.importanceofcollege.com/statistics.html
U.a. (2005). “Quotations on knowledge”,12p. Think exist. Retrieved from http://thinkexist.com/quotes/like/education_is_only_a_ladder_to_gather_fruit_from/159545/